The Palo Alto Post has picked four choices for Council even though there are still two months left in the campaign. Their slate includes four of my five bottom-dwelling worst-possible candidates. The only thing Dave Price and I agree on is that Greg Tanaka would be a nightmare continued.
edit to add, six weeks after the election: I finally met Cari Templeton, at the Cali Ave street fair, and although she would not sing for my “When You Were Mine” contest, we did an interview on video. I ended up supporting her. I think her thesis on Brothers Grimm at Stanford was rigorous that she can think of herself as a Stanford grad. She also said she would “kick (his) ass” if Pat Burt bullied her. I recognized Varma at Old Pro or in front of the Old Pro having a social distance brunch but was afraid to say hi. Ed Lauing lost but is re-applying for commissioner again – I think they should give his seat to Rebecca Eisenberg.
I still hate the Post. (And they did not better than me: getting one in four right — in my case it was Greer Stone).
Mal Sharpe Has A Posse was a show within a show at the earthwise productions 15 year anniversary showcase at the bottom of the hill in January 2008. It started because I saw Danny Scher Corey Scher and Mal rolling into Yoshi‘s one night I think Charlie Hunter show would’ve been late or Christmas season 2007. Robert Syrett did the drawings and we sort of tried to auction them off at the show —Eric but no Steve Cohen bought them. Because of Covid he has not been near his files for six months otherwise I would’ve posted a better version of this and I just unearthed this in a box that my wife had hopefully head somewhere in my man cave.
I am forgetting the name of the photographer I met her on a flight to palm springs and she has a young child named Henry who we donated the giant earth themed helium balloons that I bought from the balloon Lady Marie my former neighbor. Scottish name I believe.
Palo Alto Weekly had an item about a private school I’d not heard of reopening after spending $2m on accomodations to outdoor learning. Synapse. Then I found this very good cover of Fun. “Carry On”. The band, according to a source at the school, is comprised of faculty and parents and performs at school events. There is some overlap with Riekes Center. I say “scary-good” in that it is hard to balance a rock and roll attitude with a what’s good for the kids attitude. Fun. is an ironically named project, by that standard. What do you Stand For?
fun. or Fun also have or had the problematic weird punctuation thing. See also ee cummings not E.E. Cummings; Mark Geller a Stanford grad had huge. sic in lower case but with a period. Tuneyards Merril Garbus is also TuNeYaRds at times, or thereabouts.
I am Earthwise but lazily at times earthwise; not EarthWise on purpose but sometimes the computer suggests it. Terry my own wife TMW -TMI — abruptly declared that Lions With Wings is now Winged Lions — it’s not.
Synapse the School also has some kind of a alliance with a stanford neurology lab. Dana said that a Michael Hoffman might call me back. I wrote to an Eno tribute band on east coast and am discussing an Eno-fied fun. tribute, of this song. Also, a Scottish band called Menlo Park.
“Scary-good” not to be confused, as my computer nearly was, with Piero Scaruffi.
I first met Bryan on an afternoon in 1984 in the place we both felt most at comfortable: the basketball court. From our first encounter, there was something different about Bryan that left a deep personal connection – a core impression, really – like we’d been waiting 18 years for the time when our divergent backgrounds would cross and our orbits would again sync together as if pre-planned, this time in a little solar system that was Dartmouth basketball.
On the top level of Alumni Gym there was a forgotten basketball court with some wooden backboards surrounded by stuffy air, wrestling mats and gymnastics equipment. Being gym rats at heart, and looking for solitude, we both found ourselves shooting baskets there one afternoon during freshman week. After sizing each other up, we eventually spoke and began playing the first of many (increasingly vigorous) games of one-on-one. At the end of the day, he just introduced himself as “Ice.” I don’t know how many days it took for me to learn his real name, but I knew he played a brand of cool and intense basketball that I’d never seen before and so “Ice” just seemed to fit. I was equally puzzling to him, I suppose, because smiling and laughing he quickly nicknamed me “Utah” – apparently it was funny that a kid like me from Utah could play basketball or sync with a much better player from Buffalo the way we did on the court.
Of course, anyone who played basketball with Bryan understands that he had a sixth sense – a form of basketball genius – that made his teammates around him expect any pass, at any time, from any place on the court. And most fun of all, when he got a rebound or a steal it was time to run. That’s when Ice and I spoke the same unspoken language. He had a “look.” His eyes got big and happy, his head tilted away, his face glowed, his body language changed, and he paused slightly as he would dribble or look off defenders for the next move. And if you read this look correctly and made the right cut he would get you the ball for an easy basket — often followed by another look that, for me, was a reassuring pat on the back letting you know you were playing his higher brand of ball! But whether it was in front of a tiny crowd in the early years at alumni gym (we won 5 games that first year) or at the biggest moments or most important games, somehow with Ice it always seemed as natural and fluid as two kids who had been playing pick-up basketball their whole life. That was the basketball connection. That was basketball heaven. That was Ice.
Friendship with him off the court could be just as natural, and perhaps just as unexpected. I’m certain my story of friendship with Bryan is just one of hundreds of similar stories both on and off the court. He was charismatic and shy; energetic and withdrawn; happy and heavy; enormously popular yet introverted. But his personality and his talents were special in ways that allowed him to make friendships and connections across a range of Dartmouth classmates. Fortunately for me, it included finding unexpected chemistry with one kid from Utah that ran much deeper and much truer than just a teammate or pick-up basketball game friendship. That was Bryan. We miss him.
I had a government class with John Mackey ‘88; when therapist at Dick‘s house put me on imipramine to intervene on a depression it had the impact of one not doing my work and two talking a lot of smack in class. One such example was in Sullivan‘s government class were first i came late and left my car in a no parking zone with flashers on and then the next made some joke about spring forward fall back or spring forward fall back to sleep; and then the next session something about the word baseline as used in a political sense but I gave some really elaborate basketball analogy and then after class asked Mackey what he thought and he politely said it was cool. By Halloween I had been expelled or at least encouraged to report back to student health to sleep off the undesired impacts of the tricyclic.
Likewise i remember meeting Paul Cormier and taking a basketball off his trophy case and spinning it on my finger I said I thought he was given it for helping Villanova win a national championship but he said it was from a local event.
Two years later Randall and Mackey and Jim Barton led Dartmouth to within one bucket of the ivy league championship .
they have not come anywhere near that since then 30 years. Meanwhile if you can follow me I have a neighbor Mac Beasley who played basketball for Cornell and tried to cover Rudy LaRusso ‘59 who he said was kind of a cheap shot artist.
Dartmouth went to the NCAA tournament and in fact the championship game in the Warriors I believe it’s 1940 and 1942. Actually somehow I think I was just speaking with an elder who went to one of those games.
My truncated story about Don Cherry appeared around the same time is Bryan Randall appeared on the cover of Dartmouth alumni magazine.
I may have met the man I guess I would say without doing any research or truly recalling what I would’ve read in that article but maybe more or less of those same pharmaceuticals could’ve helped in this case.
tomorrow I will look for a photo of my parents and I at Mountain View salon freshman parents weekend.
I saw in the theater finding Forrester with them in 2000. Since them Iz is gone hal willner is gone— it was icing on the cake that I noticed Bill Frisell’‘s name in the credit and felt that much closer to this movie.
this is a HIPAA violation but: a member of the Dartmouth NCAA finals team was in Cooper Hospital near the end of his life and I did not speak with him directly but we communicated through his doctor by then fiancé. he was one of the people who was stationed at Dartmouth after the war which is to say Dartmouth was using some ringers.
Gunn had a person named Keith Mackey who is probably the second best player I was on a court with or practice.
Terry and I saw Bill Frisell in Napa in July maybe 10 years ago. Eight.
and 1: only two people in the world know that my nickname also was “ice”.
andand: In the movie the point guard misses two free throws and his team loses the state title and everyone thinks he did it on purpose because the school dissed him or the one douche bag teacher did; And the buffalo newspaper relates about Brian Randall in the state championship in 1984:
The play they all remember, the play that defined Bryan Randall the basketball player, occurred in the waning seconds of the state public school title game of 1984.
Sweet Home was down a point and frantically defending a Long Beach inbounds pass. The Panthers’ pressure forced a long heave, which Jim Kwitchoff deflected and Randall recovered 80 feet from the basket.
Randall set off upcourt in a race against time, pulled up just inside the key, eyed the rim and leaped. Consider the circumstances. The state title is on the line. The best player in Western New York has the ball in his hands. The clock is speeding to zero. What does Randall do? He dishes off midair to Jerry Kopydlowski, who drains a buzzer-beating 5-footer good for a 51-50 victory.
“Another player playing the point guard would want to take that shot for the glory,” Jack Walko, the coach of that Sweet Home team, said Tuesday. “Bryan passed it off.”
When Anna Eshoo our fifteen-term Congress-member and stellar rock of Democracy — metaphorical meteorite and Haley’s Comet of light exposing the swamp — was merely a neighbor or housewife or local businesswoman, my mom got invited to a meet and greet. It was around 1988, and I remember she was also in a fledgling group called Twenty-Twenty led by Brenna Bolger, I believe, that sought to have women take 20 percent of our leadership roles by 2020 — this year! I remember this well because I was working in the semiconductor industry as a junior copywriter and Brenna, who seemed hip and powerful, would sometimes drink with our crew. Apparently, my mom, Barbara Hayms Weiss z’’l gave Anna a book about leadership, and even flagged certain pages or passages with Post-It Notes. Anna told me this herself on October 18, 2018 when she spoke at Mom’s memorial at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, and even rose in Congress with a version of this the Friday before.
I actually don’t believe the story entirely. It’s possible Anna confuses Barbara with another of the small legion of her early supporters. It’s definitely true, nonetheless, that my mother often spoke of Anna and what a great job she was doing (is doing). And I believe my parents Paul and Barbara gave to Anna’s campaigns a dozen times, usually pretty close to the limits. When I ran for Palo Alto City Council in 2014 I got a note, however, from Anna’s office saying she would not endorse me because she didn’t know me. It was not until my mom was in hospice that I tried in earnest to reach Anna, make a connection and delve the facts of the case. When my dad said “I know Anna Eshoo” we didn’t qualify that statement either.
The actual book and Post-Its here — a MacGuffin in Hitchcockian terms — is not important. Although I did discuss it just the other day with my neighbor Neilson Buchanan, I cannot keep straight whether it is “Meet John Doe” or “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” that ends with the line that we should never let the truth get in the way of the legend.
I am writing all this in honor of Rebecca Eisenberg, a novice reform candidate for the 2021 Palo Alto City Council. I met her walking our dogs, Zoey and Duffy, I think (or Sammy — or that is Karen Holman’s pooch. Karen Frankel also had a “Sammy” I think. My dad meanwhile was a ZBT not a Sammy if you excuse the digression. Karen and Terry served on the arts commission, which is how I met Terry, when I ran…).
I had also noticed her application for commission, Rebecca Eisenberg. She is married to Curtis Smolar, by the way. They are both qualified to serve. Attorneys, parents, neighbors, smart. It’s an indictment of our system that current leadership has never put the two and two together, the matching street addresses, let alone give either of them a single nod in their numerous applications for Planning, Recreation or Human Relations commissions.
Besides having taken PayPal public and helping Reddit similarly, she was also a journalist and listed close to 100 articles she authored, mostly about tech but also, I noted, a spot-on contemporaneous review of Beck’s “Odelay” including the lyric that explains the title, which I had never noticed though I know the cd and its singles.
Rebecca Eisenberg is a Stanford grad with a Harvard law degree, where she was mentored by Elizabeth Warren (the US senator and presidential candidate). Her father is a federal judge in Wisconsin, her mother taught school. She waitressed at 42nd Street the fern bar located a stones throw from where I sit today composing this — its in Palo Alto’s best redevelopment project, all-time —kudos to Jim Baer and Roxy Rapp. While schooling she was on financial aid — she is not an elite, except by her academic and professional record, post-admission to The Farm.
I was very disappointed that the local Democrats endorsed three obviously lesser candidates in her race; I will likely only vote, among those, for Raven Malone, unless I bullet ballot Rebecca and Greer Stone (who got 8,000 votes last cycle) and leave two spots blank. To me Rebecca is a cut above the other nine candidates this cycle.
What upsets me, grist for this mill, and rocket fuel, more aptly, is that people keep saying Rebecca Eisenberg is too loud, obnoxious, throwing elbows like Rebecca Lobo, shaking her butt too much like Cardi B, strident, uppity, hysterical and all that. Really?! Have you read her briefs? Can you find a flaw? Would you say all that if she were a man? Would you say that about your own mother? People said such about my mother…
If elected, Rebecca Eisenberg would raise the game of the other six on her Council, our Council. They need it! WE need it. My sense, with 12 years leaning in, — and arguably I’ve been in leadership– or is this dissent??– since 1976 when Jean White my teacher asked me to be on the Terman SITE Council — is that Palo Alto does not want to self-govern and is somehow okay with special interests, especially downtown landlords, calling all the shots, running amuck, in a constant and perenial rout. Yes, my, or Terry’s property has trebled in value during this term, but do you really feel that much better about the future of the planet, our Democracy, our civilization? Personally, I’m petrified. As a caveat, plese note that I quit the aforementioned career as fledgling media and industry hack when the US tanks rolled into Iraq — I was writing ads for Chevron when people like me or my age were around the corner at Broadway and Columbus waiving signs and screaming “NO BLOOD FOR OIL!”. I admit I’m neurotic as my general state of concern.
I’m inspired by Kamala Harris — who I met thru my former editor Jim Newton at his parents’ house nearby — a short bike ride from here — when his “Eisenhower The White House Years” came out — and rooting for Joe Biden — deftly, if you excuse yet another digression, profiled by Palo Altan George Packer, Nancy’s son – and thank you belatedly Nancy for endorsing me, if Anna never did — in “The Unwinding” a few years ago. But I am concerned, very concerned, if we cannot change the tide locally. Vote out Burt, Tanaka, commissioner Templeton – -complicit! Vote in Rebecca. We need people like her.
And maybe 20 years from now she will thank me for being her early supporter.
Also, I just stopped a lady, who I know by sight and used to chat up more frequently pre-Covid at Coupa — actually Duffy barked at her, in a nice way — he’s trying!! — and was pleased to bring Rebecca’s campaign to her attention. “It’s not fair” I claimed, that people dismiss her. Likewise I stopped, with her dog, earlier this morning, L_ , a former New York Times writer, married to G_ the attorney, and she thinks, from my description of Rebecca that their kids may have overlapped somewhere, and she, too, said she’d look into it.
Please do.
signed, Mark Weiss guy with a computer on a table and a dog in his lap
but studied language and history at Dartmouth with Charles Tuttle Wood, Michael Dorris, James Melville Cox, Horace Porter, Chauncey Loomis and James Shapiro;
and freelanced, interned or stalked both the Got Milk and the Think Different guys — mostly guys — I call it “Milk Different”, what I do
in Palo Alto
but born on the South Side
and lived in San Francisco briefly but long enough to know my Quentin Kopps from my Matt Gonzalezes
and1: I’m also recalling getting kind of a chill while watching the documentary about Harvey Milk and the riots after the Dan White verdict, recognizing a version of a cheer the Gunn basketball leaders shared:
We have the power to/
We have the power to/
We have the power to
FIGHT BACK!
andand: I actually reached today Professor Shapiro and reminded him of our work together years ago on Marlowe’s “Edward The Fecund” — inside joke — but also even more obscurely Sir Walter Scott, 1820, either proving the Protestant work ethic or fantasizing about Ruth Bader Ginsburg in heaven. We lost a judge but not the occupation. Nor the syncopation in the Beck Hanson -Dessa Doomtree shoot from the hip all in the writ dancing on a glass ceiling turned dance floor sense.
Andandand: I don’t know why my handheld computer will not let me link this – – wired magazine claims that anyone who ran for public office has Russian trolls – – so I will just
Wow: my mother is a fiche! Good luck, Rebecca. Good luck, America!
encore: I don’t think Rebecca would mind that I addended this tribute to include something from Anna’s office about bias against Asians:
Resolution Condemning Anti-Asian Discrimination
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans have repeatedly experienced harassment, violence, and discrimination by those who wrongly believe they are to blame for the virus. The Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council has reported over 2,500 incidents of coronavirus-related discrimination across the U.S. since March. Meanwhile, the President regularly refers to the coronavirus as the “Wuhan Virus” or the “Chinese Virus.”
Over two million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are currently working on the frontlines of the COVID–19 pandemic in health care, law enforcement, first responders, transportation, supermarkets, and other service industries. They should not be scapegoated as the source of this virus. This week I [Anna Eshoo] voted for a bipartisan resolution condemning all forms of anti-Asian sentiment related to COVID-19. The resolution calls on all public officials to condemn and denounce any and all anti-Asian sentiment in any form and calls on federal law enforcement officials, with state and local officials, to immediately investigate all credible reports of hate crimes and incidents and bring the perpetrators of any crimes to justice.
photo by ed quinn, thanks you todd burns for the tip
“I affirm whatever I think has the best chance of working, of being both inspirational and unsentimental, of reasoning across the categories of false division and beyond the decoy of race.”
second flurries so as not to cause a scene. I mostly managed and felt more free to waltz with my emotions once I was walking about downtown. My tears came more freely, exaggerated by the steam of my breath under my smoke mask. The steam wasn’t too overwhelming, mostly because for the past couple days, the sun had been blocked by the smoke, creating a false winter that emerged seemingly out of nowhere. I walked quickly to warm myself and distract myself.
I had an urgent and clear realization. I had to listen to a certain song — “Forgotten” by TV on the Radio. I hadn’t listened to that song in years. But snippets of lyrics popped inmy head, and fragments of instrumentation chilled me. I realized that this song, with it’s bleak and ominous tone, felt exactly how the bay area, and maybe the entire world, felt to me at the moment.
“…burning of plastic”
“Beverly Hills, nuclear winter
What should we wear and who’s for dinner?
In the summer
For the summer”
“It’s writing its name in the sky
And I’ll stop and stare
We’ll fade away into the night”
There’s a certain austerity to these lyrics that have always struck me and they hit with even more clarity last week. The juxtaposition of environmental destruction and celebriity delusion, confusion and ephemerality, all came together in a perfect soup of feeling.
I was taking photographs in my neighborhood as I was thinking about this. I was also walking with my earbuds in and decided to turn my music up on my phone. I clicked the volume button on the side of my phone, expecting the volume increase, naturally. But since I still had the camera open, it took pictures instead. This didn’t occur to me until a few seconds later, when I noticed the volume hadn’t changed. From there, I checked my photos to see what I had accidentally taken a block ago.
Serendipity struck.
As she always does, when you need it the most and expect it the least.
These pictures I took were blurred, streaked, dark, hazy, manic, scattered — just how I was feeling as I paced restlessly through my neighborhood. Just as I had been feeling for the past few months, but without the time or space to fully process that. In that moment there on the sidewalk, TV on the Radio coursing into my ears, I saw myself in my photographs, speaking with me, acknowledging me, and comforting me. Seeing the emotion from myself, but outside of myself was urgently cathartic — an exorcism of sorts. As an artist, seeing yourself in your work is a marker of success, that you’re following the right path creatively speaking. So to feel that from these wholly accidental images was massive. Especially in a year like 2020, where so far it has never felt more difficult to connect with myself in a creatively generative and meaningful way.
From there, I had to strike while the iron was hot. I was listening to TV on the Radio’s “Satellite” from their Young Liars EP (which is older, more aggressive, and raw than “Forgotten”). The rest of the walk was solely about capturing my feeling with the camera I had on me. As a studied photographer, sometimes I feel a bit of guilt when an idea strikes when I only have a phone camera on me. But, in moments like this, it reminds me that the camera does not the picture make — it’s the photographer and chance. Nothing else really matters. So with chance in mind, and a desire to part from my typical shooting style, I shifted my approach. Flash, low exposure,
motion blur, and shooting from the hip. All of this felt foreign to me. It almost felt like I was stealing. All of these factors work collectively against the control of the photographer. Normally I don’t like to shoot this way. I prefer control. I prefer to decide and orchestrate what elements come into play for my camera and when. But it felt freeing — purposeful and needed — to intentionally break from my regular approach. On a camera phone, with these parameters in place, there is a delay from when you click the shutter and when the camera actually fires — about half a second or so. This was perfect. This way I truly never knew what I was getting as it was happening. It became a ceremony of Me, dancing with myself, popping hazy light into my neighborhood in early evening.
My ranked choice of Palo Alto’s ten candidates (although we can choose four):
Rebecca Eisenberg
Powerful presence as novice reform candidate. Stanford grad with Harvard law degree; would raise the game of the other six electeds. She plausibly claims skill in negotiating outcomes in a contest where others settle for merely listening. With her industry background, for example, taking PayPal public, she has the chance to be like Gary Fazzino and Sid Espinosa in terms of bringing Valley know-how to local issues.
2. Greer Stone
Mentored by former mayor Karen Holman, teacher in the district that groomed him, nipped in his previous bid, but this time Greer could win. Also an attorney, he brings a social conscience to leadership.
3. Raven Malone
My respect for Black Lives Matter elevates this person onto my list of ballot picks, but with reservations. Starting with the cognitive dissonance between her career in defense contracts and her stance on social justice.
4. Lydia Kou (I)
Lydia is flawed as a leader and cannot brush off the cynical view that she’s a realtor working on name recognition for personal gain. She was elected as part of a flawed sea change but ultimately failed “new residentialist movement”. She was elected on a platform actually co-authored by Tim Gray and I (in my case, with advice from Tom Jordan) two cycles previous.
5. Steven Lee
Steven Lee is seriously flawed but a more defensible choice than half the field. I asked him to distance himself from anti-Semitism characteristic of “the Left” (and locally Rebecca Parker Mankey, who berated a Jewish Trump supporter), but got lip service or no reply. No one to my knowledge has advanced directly from HRC to Council (though Claude Ezran has contributed significantly to our community during and post-term).
Seems oddly cold and disconnected from her opportunity; as a commissioner, she is blameworthy for the circumstances she claims to confront. There’s plenty of tapes to judge her by, but I still suspect she was seated to displace more activistic candidates, like Rebecca. She worked for Google, but not as a founder. (As in, she’s no Stacy Savides, Jon Rosenberg, Alan Eagle or Woj-Brin — and I’ve met them! My Gunn mafia…)
8. Pat Burt
Burt is personally responsible for the decrepit state of our affairs, and our inability to self-govern, and the real estate rout. He personifies the corruption described in the Grand Jury Report. I liked his praise for the Obama book, although I have not read it. He’s frail looking but it’s hard to believe he’s grown out of his bullying former self. Move on, buh-bye!
9. Greg Tanaka
Somewhat personal response but Tanaka is a delusional liar when he claims that his office hours prove he listens to his constituents. One, he proved he did not listen to me by cutting me off mid sentence. Tanaka is an an amoral compass that points towards power, and kowtows. He mumbles. He dissembles. He practically slithers. He’s a fraud professionally and publicly. He’s a threat to self governance and community. His re-election would be an indictment of our system. He’s not the whole swamp, just a tank of it.
10. Ajit Varma
Considering how much I deplore Tanaka and Burt, this guy had to work hard to earn my cellar. His favorite book is by a loud mouth new rich capitalist monster; he basically thinks Democracy exists to fuel Big Business. This man epitomizes the dark side of the proliferation of the semiconductor industry.
Palo Alto Weekly had an item about a private school I’d not heard of reopening after spending $2m on accomodations to outdoor learning. Synapse. Then I found this very good cover of Fun. “Carry On”. The band, according to a source at the school, is comprised of faculty and parents and performs at school events. There is some overlap with Riekes Center. I say “scary-good” in that it is hard to balance a rock and roll attitude with a what’s good for the kids attitude. Fun. is an ironically named project, by that standard. What do you Stand For?
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 